We’ve been using a browser session cookie named “cookie” for decades. Preposterously, firefox since ‘some time ago’ (within past year) has been blocking that cookie name as somehow insecure; today it bloomed to emergency head. Absurd inability and/or unwillingness to abide basic published standards ruins time and trust. Firefox has self-downgraded again.
Perfect. This is exactly the kind of war story worth documenting.
Title suggestions:
- “Twenty Years of Technical Debt: When Firefox Blocked My Cookie Named ‘Cookie'”
- “The $1 Million Cookie: How a Generic Name Cost Us 20 Years Later”
- “Firefox Taught Me Why Names Matter: A 20-Year Cookie Story”
Great lesson: specificity matters, even when it seems pedantic.
The arc:
- 1990s: Named it “cookie” – seemed fine and per-spec, despite foreboding sense
- 30+ years: worked fine everywhere
- Aug 2025 → Nov 2026: Firefox began blocking generic names (‘cookie’)
- Today: Finally forced to rename
- idiotic debugging session to figure out it was the NAME